252 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1962 



AIRSHIP AFTER BUYER. 



Inventprs of North Carolina Box Kite 



Machine Want Government to 



Purchase It. 



Sptcial to The New y'crk Times. 



WASHINGTON, Dec. 23-Th«s Inventors 

 Of the airship which is said to have made 

 ■evcral succejssful flights in North Caro- 

 lina, near Kitty Hawk, arc anxlouH to aell 

 the use of their device to the Government. 

 They claim that they have solved the prob* 

 lem of aerial navigation, and have never 

 made a failure of any attempt to fly. 



Their machine is an adaptation of the box 

 kite Idea, with a propeller working on a 

 perpendicular shaft to raise or lower the 

 craft, and another working on a horlsontal 

 Shaft to send It forward. The machine, tt 

 is said, can be raised or lowered with per- 

 fect control, and can carry a strong gaso- 

 line engine capable of making a speed of 

 ten mllea an hour. 



The test made in Ncrth Carolina will be 

 fully reported to the Ordnance Board of the 

 War Department, and If the machine com- 

 mends ltf<elf sufficiently, further tests will 

 be made In the vicinity of Washington, and 

 an effort made to arrange a sale of the de- 

 vice to the Government. The use to which 

 the Government would put It would be in 

 scouting and Hignal work, and possibly In 

 torpedo warfare. 



Figure 4. — New York Times account of Wright brothers' first airplane, Dec. 25, 1903. 



The 1903 Wright engine (pi. 4, fig. 1) was designed by the brothers 

 Wright and built with the assistance of their faithful mechanic, 

 Charles E. Taylor (not related to the writer). This engine is espe- 

 cially well described by Eobert B. Meyer, Jr., in the Annual Keport 

 of the Smithsonian Institution for 1961. It was a 4-cylinder water- 

 cooled, horizontal engine of 200 cubic inches displacement, with auto- 

 matic inlet valves. Fuel was supplied by gravity from a small can on 

 top of the engine. From there it flowed through an adjustment valve 

 to a surface in the intake pipe which was heated by the cylinder water 

 jacket. Ignition was by a low-tension magneto with "make-and- 

 break" spark contacts in the cylinders. The engine would give 16 hp. 

 for a minute or so, after wliich it gave a steady 12 hp. Control, such 

 as it was, was by the spark timing. As shown in table 1, this engine 

 was heavy and of low powder compared to the contemporary Manly 

 engine, but it flew ! This basic design was later improved by the 

 Wrights so that by 1910 it was delivering 30 hp. for a weight of 180 

 pounds, 6 pounds per hp. 



The first and subsequent engines followed contemporary auto- 

 mobile practice in cylinder arrangement. However, the water jacket 

 and crankcase were of cast aluminum, an innovation which, although 



